November 17, 2012

Peking Duck at Home

I winged it! Get it? GET IT? What you see in above is Peking duck, made by yours truly. It was honestly, easier than I thought. But then again it's wasn't made traditionally and I added my own spin on things, but my family, espeically my dad (who is a huge BBQ duck lover/critique) loved it. And I believe them, because my taste buds told me so. The scarey part is to remake it so that it's better next time, which is a little difficult considering I didn't measure out...anything. Whoops. The "secret" spices I used were a little bit of all the Chinese spices I found in the cupboard. I sniffed and put. If it smelt familiar, I added it. This included five spice, all spice, white pepper and another spice which was label in Cantonese. Ha ha!

The roasted duck was served with a made from scratch steamed bun wrap. I followed a recipe online for this and it turned out okay. Not as fluffy as I thought they would be, but it did the job and tasted fine. It was the texture that I need to work on! But it was my first time, so eeeeh...WHAT.EVER.

Peking duck wraps are usually eaten with cucumber and green onions (sometimes carrots), so that's what we did. Combine that with a light slathering of hoisin sauce, makes Friday night dinner!

Fresh out of the oven

Check out that colour!

Check out that crispy skin!

Thanks to the "glaze", the duck got a super deep and rich colouring and some additional flavour.

lol, my try at slicing up a peking duck

Definitely not perfect

The meat was still moist after an hour and a half in the oven!

Assembled

The buns are slightly sweet, soft and are the perfect vehicle for all the yummy innards

Flavour party!

Duck meat, cucumber, green onions, steamed bun goodness

We've got three ducks in the chest freezer, so it's safe to say that I will be revisiting this dish before the year's end. Perhaps I'll have the Peking duck with Chinese pancakes instead! This is a dish we usually have when we're out for dinner, so I'm pretty darn happy that I'm able to make a yummy version of it at home. Bonus points for the entire dinner being less than $10 for four people. ;)

About

Hi, I'm Janetta from Toronto. I cook, bake and make big messes. I photograph nearly everything and those photos will most likely end up being posted here. I've got a little black cat named Tank, who's super cute and a little bit nosy. You'll see a lot of photos of her too!